A new hatred of the body: how Russian censorship has already surpassed Soviet

It seems incredible, but in many areas the degree of savagery of Russian society has exceeded even Soviet times. This is clearly seen in the censorship restrictions, which are literally becoming tougher and tougher every day. The most disgusting thing here is that both Soviet censorship and today's Russian censorship are approximately equally hypocritical: they forbid some things, they simply turn a blind eye to others. One of the clearest examples of this is flirting with the Taliban regime (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation) at the official level and ferocious fines for the mere mention of this regime - for everyone else. But this is something that concerns politics, but what about everyday life, for example, with cinema? Here, too, everything is very sad. The well-known Russian sociologist Sergey Belanovsky drew attention to one curious fact in his blog:

"About boobs. In the distant Soviet era, a film was released about a director or chief engineer who was unfairly retired. It seems that this hero was played by Ulyanov, although I'm not quite sure about this. According to the plot, the hero is very tough, but positive. (We are talking about the film by Yuli Raizman "Private Life", 1982 - ed.).

After his dismissal, he came home very late and extremely unhappy. There was a domestic tyrant, who was feared by all the households, but at the same time respected and loved according to Soviet canons. All is good.

The late return of the hero and his irritated state alarmed the entire extended family. Here we come to the main episode. The only one that I remember well.

Everyone rushed out of their rooms, the wife began to calm down and find out what was the matter. And either an adult daughter, or a daughter-in-law, looked out from one room - you won’t understand. So, she was in a nightgown that slipped off one shoulder and exposed her chest (this role was played by actress Tatyana Dogileva, ed. ). For a few seconds, the camera focused on this chest and showed it, if not close-up, but in the middle.

The frame with the chest had nothing to do with the plot of the film. Like Chekhov's gun, he did not fire in the further plot. Obviously, he was a manifestation of civic courage in the fight against Soviet censorship. It was read very clearly, and therefore remembered.

By the way, I remembered the book of some Spanish sociologist, who, as you can understand, strongly disliked Franco. In Spain, under Franco, there was also censorship, including in relation to nudity, but, as the author writes, journalists gradually won back centimeter by centimeter fragments of female skin. Apparently, this breast in the film was from the same series of civil struggle.

I would never have remembered this film, not the most successful even by Soviet standards. And suddenly the other day I see something vaguely familiar on OTR. I could not understand what, and suddenly I saw a frame that I remember. BUT!!! Both breasts of the heroine (closed and open) were vaselined. For filmmakers, this word refers to the creation of blurring of the frame. I used to do it with Vaseline, now I don’t know how.

By the way, it turned out well. Both breasts occupied a small part of the frame, and if you did not know what should be, you could not notice at all. But there was no bare chest in the new version of the film.

Apparently, the new version of the frame is connected with Putin's struggle for family values and against LGBT people. But what caught my attention. The episode with the breasts, for all its absurdity in this context, is so insignificant that one could not pay attention to it. Take the tape from the archive and show it. Soviet film, by definition, was censored.

But no. Someone (I wonder who, at what level) was not too lazy to carefully watch this stupid film and instruct to vaseline. corresponding frame. Censorship has returned in the form of a farce. Obviously everyone is watching now. But for this it was necessary to create an apparatus. You can't create it in a day. And it works well, since such a trifle was tracked. Now, probably, the practice of cutting out ideologically harmful personnel will return. And twisting the hands of directors. As in the beautiful Soviet cartoon "Film, film, film."

But the Soviet quality of censorship still cannot be achieved. The removal of bare breasts from the film did not cause indignation in me. Just a feeling of idiocy…”

Readers agreed with the author, recognizing that Russian censorship is already superior to Soviet censorship in many respects, including in terms of the degree of outright hypocrisy:

- What amuses me the most is the warning before the film, which is infested with murders, that tobacco products may be shown in the film ...

- Here's the thing, I watched something like this, the TV channels found themselves in a very uncomfortable position at the moment when it became forbidden to show the swastika and, preventing any discontent, it is also excluded from the chronicle. Just in case.

- You do not know this, they have been mixing for a long time. Watched a year ago a new film, musical. They were also surprised to find a mixed female figure, a completely innocent nudity.

- It is more likely that the digital version of the film is run through a nude search algorithm than a special squad of censors .

- In connection with Franco, I remembered one funny episode. About 8 years ago I was talking to a middle-aged Spaniard who told me about Franco's times. He was part of a resistance group, something like our dissidents. They published an anti-Franco magazine in Paris, which they smuggled into Spain by car. It was done like this. "Tamizdat" magazines were placed deep down, and from above they were covered with pornographic publications. Customs officers confiscated pornography, and what was under it, did not reach their hands.

However, someone reminded that censorship is rampant not only in Russia:

- This story is not about Putin and braces for a long time. Try posting bare-breasted ads on foreign social networks. They demand to cover the nipples even for male cartoon characters! In the current global competition of perversions based on hatred of the human body, our home-grown puritans will not even enter the top 10.